When Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton set out to write Atlas Obscura: An Explorer's Guide To The World's Hidden Wonders, their goal was to create a catalog of all the places, people, and things that inspire wonder (after all, when you can buy a plane ticket and be in Borneo in less than a day, the world can feel awfully small).

Atlas Obscura reveals the world's deepest places, hidden tunnels, greatest self-made castles, notable arbotecture (the art of shaping a living tree in order to create art or furniture), giant Buddha statues, abandoned film sets you can visit, murder houses, dinosaur parks, lake monsters of the USA, historical methods of preventing premature burial, a guide to psychotropic drugs used to enhance religious experiences, abandoned nuclear power plants, and much, much more.